Mobile billboards calling on illegal immigrants to leave the UK have been criticized as a step too far by politicians. Campaign backers have hailed the initiative as an “alternative to arrest,” while critics decry the adverts as outright “intimidation.”

As part of a pilot scheme to help reduce illegal immigration in
Britain, vans with billboards emblazoned with the slogan “Go
home or face arrest” will be driven around London boroughs.

The message in full reads: “In the UK illegally? Go home or
face arrest.” A hotline number is also shown where illegal
immigrants may receive help and advice with travel documents.
Leaflets and posters will be distributed in tandem with the
billboard vans in the targeted boroughs.

British Immigration Minister Mark Harper has described the new
initiative as “an alternative to being led away in
handcuffs.”

“Every single day our enforcement officers are arresting,
detaining and removing people with no right to be in the UK,”
said Harper, adding that the mobile billboards are part of a new
push to make it more difficult for people to live and work in the
UK illegally. According to UK government figures 28,000 illegal
arrivals voluntarily left the UK last year.

In conjunction with the billboards numbers of reforms are set to
be introduced to combat illegal immigration in the UK. They will
include a $4,600 bond which selected visitors from certain
countries will be required to pay upon applying for a British
visa. The bond will be returned to visitors from India,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana when they
leave the country.

The new policy will come into effect this November of this year.

‘Radicalization and isolation’

The new measures have triggered debate in UK society with many
politicians up in arms over what they have condemned as
“intimidation” from the British government.

Ex-minister Sarah Teather attacked the Home Office, decrying the
measures as "nothing less than straightforward
intimidation.”

“I fear that the only impact of this deeply divisive form of
politics will be to create tension and mistrust to anyone who
looks and sounds foreign,” she told UK newspaper the
Guardian.

Minister Baroness Hanham defended the measures on Wednesday in
the House of Lords, maintaining that they tackle “the reality
of the situation that there are people coming here without jobs
and without accommodation."

The billboard vans will be deployed in some of London’s more
diverse boroughs, including Hounslow, Barking and Dagenham,
Ealing, Barnet, Brent and Redbridge. These communities were
chosen because they have a below average number of voluntary
returns according to the Home Office.

Muhhamed Butt, a counselor in the London borough of Brent, told
RT said that the measures are likely to backfire on the Home
Office and push illegal immigrants “further underground.”
“I just cannot see how this trick they are trying to use to flush
out people is going to work,” Butt told RT. “There is
bound to be some impact on the community where people feel
stigmatized, isolated and divided.”

He went on to stress that there would be backlash that could
result in illegal immigrants resorting to criminality.